


Always

by strangerkindofdream



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: ...well for now anyway, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Gen, I mean, but i think its the closest i can get whilst being true to the show, but just to be clear im ALL FOR the romantic SUBTEXT my darlings, or more if you want, thasmin, this isnt exactly a full confession of feelings, you can read it as just a strong friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-12
Updated: 2021-01-12
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:55:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,594
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28719210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangerkindofdream/pseuds/strangerkindofdream
Summary: An important thasmin scene I felt was missing from the latest episode - Yaz and the Doctor finally have an actual conversation about the ten months they were apart and what the future might look like for the two of them.
Relationships: Thirteenth Doctor & Yasmin Khan, Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan
Comments: 6
Kudos: 46





	Always

**Author's Note:**

> Hello :) This is essentially my personal wish fulfilment for what I thought was missing at the end of the latest episode… The idea is that it would slot in at the end of the ep and be p much canon-compliant. Hope you like it!

It had been quiet for a while now. Very quiet. _Too_ quiet.

Quiet enough for Yaz to be concerned. She was fairly certain that the Doctor wasn’t thinking about going back and disrupting their timeline anymore… but she wasn’t at all sure what the Time Lord actually _was_ thinking. It had been a few hours since Ryan and Graham had said their goodbyes, and Yaz had drifted around the TARDIS as she processed this sudden change of events.

When she finally returned to the console room however, she was surprised to see that the Doctor had barely moved… and for someone Yaz knew to normally be so active, this stoic scene was enough to set off alarm bells in her head.

“You alright Doctor?” the young PC asked, receiving only a nod in response. “Where we off to next?” she continued, trying to keep her voice light.

“I thought maybe Women Wept, it’s an ice planet,” the blonde replied, her tone lacking its usual levity. Her eyes didn’t move from the console once.

“Oh yeah, that sounds cool.” Yaz reached for her jacket as she waited for the Doctor’s reply, but again, none came. Just a nod in acknowledgement, and then silence.

Yaz let her words hang for a few moments before trying once more. She took a careful step towards the Time Lord and tried not to feel hurt when she noticed her friend take a small step back, maintaining the level of distance between them.

“You sure you’re-”

“I’m fine!” the Doctor snapped, cutting her friend off.

She forced herself to take another step away. There was a pull between the two women, the Time Lord knew - always there, in the background, like gravity. Up until recently the Doctor had tried her hardest not to acknowledge it, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to ignore. Even when she consciously tried to keep her distance, still she somehow inexplicably found herself drawn back to Yaz. It was dangerous.

“Alright!” Yaz shot back, eyes wide as she tried to ignore the flicker of anger beginning to flare up inside her.

With a jolt the TARDIS landed, but the Doctor did not react. Yaz watched her as the blonde finally stopped fiddling with the controls and stood up straight, before leaning back against the console, eyes far far away. Yaz made a show of taking her jacket back off, draping it over the TARDIS railing and then turning to face her friend with folded arms.

“What is it?” she asked sternly. No response. “Doctor, _tell me_.”

A long silence followed before the Doctor finally spoke, dragging her eyes up to meet Yaz’s, her voice cold.

“You should’ve moved on,” the Time Lord murmured. Her mouth formed a hard line.

Yaz was thrown by this. “What?”

“Ten months?”

“…Yeah?”

“I was away… for ten months,” the Doctor continued, firm on a point that her friend didn’t like the sound of.

“I know how long it was,” Yaz snapped. Her words hung uncomfortably in the air. “What’re you saying?” she asked, somewhat afraid of the answer she might get.

“One day,” the Doctor began, her tone ominous, “I might disappear and not come back.” She was looking through Yaz now, her green eyes vacant and hardened, as if she were making a difficult decision. “You can’t spend your life waiting for me.”

“But-”

“No, Yaz,” the Doctor cut in firmly. She wasn’t going to let her friend argue with her about this, even though it was _so hard_ to try to make her understand. Stars, humans could be so stubborn - Yaz more than most. And after all, wasn’t that the main issue? “Do you know how old I am? How many friends I’ve had, how many people I’ve lost?”

“I didn’t-”

“Too many,” she continued, voice like ice. “They leave me, or I have to leave them or… we just get torn apart from each other. And I can’t predict when, or how, or _if_ I’ll ever see them again.” The Doctor’s gaze had come back to the present now as her shining eyes became fixed on Yaz’s. “I know it’s hard but you can’t-”

“Can’t what?” Yaz cut in, finally having had enough. “Can’t wait for you? Can’t _care_ about you?!”

The Doctor tried to stop herself from leaning towards Yaz, from grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her, from moving closer until their faces were barely inches apart. Instead she stepped back, wringing her hands to stop herself from reaching out. Despite her best efforts though, she still leaned in slightly. “That’s not-”

“So, what? I’m just supposed to live my life as if you could disappear at any second?” Yaz demanded. “Like that wouldn’t _matter_?” Her eyes narrowed as she frowned, her words growing louder and more emphatic by the second.

The Doctor found herself just staring back at her friend, momentarily stunned by her sudden and ferocious outrage.

“How…” Yaz continued, “…how can I act like none of this-” she gestured around vaguely, “-like _you_ don’t matter to me?” There was a lump in her throat now, and she could feel her eyes welling up, but she tried her hardest to ignore it. “ _You_ -” Yaz cut herself off, taking a deep breath. “You changed my life Doctor.”

The Time Lord took a moment to phrase it right, to be as gentle as she could be, whilst also making sure to get her point across. When she finally spoke, her voice was low. “I understand how it feels,” she began, “to be shown the universe - to experience it all for the first time and not want to let it go.”

Yaz’s hands balled into fists at her side. She was finding it harder and harder to control her reactions around the Doctor - something about their charged arguing had unlocked a visceral feeling inside her. “Then you know why I didn’t give up-”

“ _But_ ,” the Doctor continued, firm on her point. “You can’t dedicate your life to-” she took a breath, “to this.”

Her words propelled her forwards. It wasn’t anger she felt, or at least, not towards Yaz. It was more a frustration, no - a disappointment in herself. For being so careless with her friends’ lives. Time and again she reaped the consequences of her own reckless actions, and too often her fragile humans would somehow end up caught in the crossfire. Well no longer. She was resolved to make Yaz see it from her point of view - that some things just weren’t worth the risk, no matter how much it might hurt them both.

“The nature of how this works is unpredictable and unreliable… and it’ll just be so much worse when it ends if you’re not prepared for that.” The Doctor’s eyebrows were raised, green eyes wide open as she pleaded with her friend. “You can’t spend the rest of your life waiting f-”

“But why does it have to end?” Yaz looked desperate now.

There was a long silence before the Doctor spoke, and when she finally did speak, her words hung heavy with all the knowledge of the universe, and all the weariness that knowledge brought with it. “Yaz,” she began, green eyes shining with a grief she knew her friend could not comprehend. “You’re _human_.”

Yaz fell silent for a short while… and then exploded - all her frustration and inadequacies and pain burst out at once. “Don’t you think I _know_ that?! Don’t you think I _know_ that I'm just a human and you are _so much more than that_? Why do you think I love travelling with you so much? Why do you think I love-”

She cut herself off.

The two women locked eyes - Yaz was really tearing up now. The Doctor was just wide eyed. Terrified.

Yaz looked away first, crossing her arms and moving back slightly, dark eyes downcast. She thought about how it was too hard, how the Doctor never talked to her anyway and how maybe Jack was wrong - maybe all of this just _wasn’t_ worth the pain.

The Doctor finally took in the depth of anguish on her friend’s face, and suddenly became scared that she was going to lose her too. And then she really would be alone. Again.

“That’s not what I meant,” the blonde murmured.

Yaz thought about walking off, finally feeling too hurt to argue back… but she had to ask one more thing. She had to know. “Well what _did_ you mean?” she asked, voice sharp. “No, honestly, tell me. Or are you gonna ignore my question just like always?”

That cut deep and she knew it, but she is was so upset she almost didn’t care. She was so tired.

“Yaz…”

There was so much emotion in the Doctor's tone, just in that one word - in the way she said her name - that it gave Yaz pause. Like a bucket of icy water had been thrown over the angry fire inside her. This woman… this marvellous, wonderful shining light of a being suddenly looked so small. So tired. So lonely. Why did it all have to hurt so much?

Yaz decided to speak first, this time in a much gentler tone. “Jack said that, y’know, that there have been other humans you’ve travelled with and that… well, that this life… of travelling can be hard. I understand that it won’t last forever, but-” She paused as her voice cracked but she fought on, determined not to let her emotions get the better of her. Not this time. She finally had the opportunity to have a real honest conversation with the Doctor and she was not about to let that slip through her fingers. “What happened ten months ago… you just left and I- I didn’t get a say… and… well I couldn’t just give up…”

The Doctor looked at her friend with sorrowful admiration. Her beautiful, courageous friend… she was so brave and so honest. But how to make Yaz understand that the idea of her eventually being left pining… for her, for their adventures… just hurt her hearts more. “Sometimes,” the Doctor began haltingly, “I have to make decisions that I don’t want to make… and when I do… I’ll do what I can to keep you safe. And that means that sometimes…” She took a deep breath. “Sometimes it’s better to just try and move on.”

“What… and just accept that you could be out there? Lost or hurt or-” Yaz could feel the tears beginning to run down her cheeks. “I wasn’t going to give in to that. I couldn’t-”

She cut herself off yet again.

It was true that the Doctor didn’t know _everything_ about her, but Yaz was aware that the Time Lord knew enough about her past to put the pieces together. Enough about the darkness that the young officer carried with her… the darkness she’d had to drag herself out of time and time again. The darkness that she tried _so hard_ not to slip back into.

Yaz shook her head as if to ward off the thought of it, and wrapped her arms around herself. “I couldn’t give in…” she whispered, dark eyes sparkling with such a deep sadness. “Not again.”

The crease between the Doctor’s eyebrows deepened as she took in Yaz’s words. She felt her hearts breaking as she looked at her friend, wondering idly how she could sometimes be so absolutely blind to what was right in front of her. Yaz. Her amazing friend. The one precious, tiny part of her little fam that was left - the only one who had decided to stay with her, in spite of _everything_. And she looked so sad. So lost. So scared.

There it was again - that pull. And this time it was stronger than ever. She didn’t even try to fight it.The thing was, it seemed that they would always be drawn together, and despite her best efforts, the Doctor could never guarantee that Yaz would be safe. Or that it wouldn’t hurt when they were inevitably torn apart, be it for a few hours, or much, much longer. And yet when she was faced with troubled times, there was no-one she wanted by her side more than Yasmin Khan. Brave, brilliant, strong-willed Yasmin Khan.

And so what could she do but give in to it? At least now Yaz was aware of the reality of what could happen - if she remained undeterred… well, there wasn’t really much more the Doctor could do. There was certainly no point in trying to change Yaz’s mind. Even she knew a fight like that would never be won. The thought almost made her smile.

The Doctor took a few steps closer, making sure to meet Yaz’s tearful gaze.

“I’m sorry Yaz. Truly.”

She waited to see how this would be received before continuing, and when she finally did carry on, the words began to just spill out of her. “I’m sorry I left and I'm sorry that I didn’t explain - I should’ve thought and I-”

Her words were cut off as Yaz slammed into her, wrapping her arms around the Time Lord in a fierce hug. The Doctor returned the embrace immediately - instinctively - holding on to her friend with trembling hands, her grip like a vice. She could feel Yaz’s chest heaving as she fought for control of her breath, trying to stop the sobs that she must’ve been holding back for so long now. 

“I’m sorry too,” Yaz murmured after a while, once her breathing had returned almost to normal.

“I didn’t mean to- I shouldn’t’ve-”

“Shhh, it’s okay,” the Doctor told her, moving her hands slowly up and down Yaz’s back. “And- I'm sorry you were alone for all that time,” she murmured into the brunette’s shoulder.

“Me too.”

* * *

They weren’t sure, in the end, how long they stood like that, gently swaying back and forth as they held on to each other so so tightly… but eventually the two women felt safe enough to let go.

“So…” Yaz began, moving to put her jacket back on. “Ice planet?”

“Yeah,” the Doctor confirmed, a hint of that familiar excited sparkle glowing in her eyes once again. “Well,” she amended, beginning to come back to something more like herself, “maybe more of a frost planet… like a perpetual January.”

“Sounds cold,” Yaz observed, feeling slightly apprehensive.

“Oh, but the festivals they have are fantastic!” the Doctor enthused. “And the scenery! The waves in the ocean actually freeze solid - 100ft up in the air - and you can walk underneath them and…”

The blonde continued to ramble on, but at this point Yaz was barely taking her words in. She gazed at the Doctor and smiled, glad to see that her friend seemed to be returning to something resembling her usual enthusiastic self. Yaz felt that familiar warm glow light up inside her chest - something she had been missing for over ten months. It felt right.

She felt home.

“You coming?” the Doctor finally asked, stopping on the ramp and holding her hand out to Yaz.

“Of course,” Yaz replied easily, moving forward and reaching out to the Doctor.

Yes, she still had worries and doubts about what they had been through… and about what might be to come… but for now, she was happy to believe that it didn’t matter. For now, Yaz was content to continue exploring the universe, holding tight to the most amazing person she had ever met.

She flashed the Doctor a brilliant smile as she took her hand, their fingers interlocking gently.

“Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading - I hope you liked it! Please let me know what you think? I’d really appreciate it :) x


End file.
